


digging up the grave

by jaegerjagues



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, F/M, Hordak is slightly out of character, Pacific Rim AU, haha oops I did it again, my hands slipped, this follows the movie much more closely, with a few caveats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28940145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaegerjagues/pseuds/jaegerjagues
Summary: The world is ending, thanks to the Kaiju. Where's the harm in getting back in a Jaeger? There's just one problem. He needs a partner.aka, the weird science remix/second pacrim au no one asked for?
Relationships: Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	digging up the grave

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [weird science (and other occurrences at the end of the world)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28581801) by [jaegerjagues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaegerjagues/pseuds/jaegerjagues). 



> i, uh, couldn't help myself? a few notes:
> 
> 1.) the Teens have been aged up from fifteen to seventeen for FanFic reasons and also because I felt like it. 
> 
> 2.) It's mentioned on the Wiki that Entrapta is the only Princess who has never directly harmed anyone; it's plot relevant!
> 
> 3.) This fanfic closely mirrors the plot of the actual movie Pacific Rim (2013), though I have taken certain liberties. Some of the dialogue also mirrors that of the movie. 
> 
> 4.) I just. Really like sticking Hordak in a jaeger?
> 
> 5.) You really, really, really don't have to read the behemoth that is weird science to understand this. Honestly.

Hordak frowns at the intruder; when the foreman said he had a visitor, he hadn’t expected the former Marshal of the Alaskan Shatterdome to be waiting impatiently for him in an unfinished part of the Anti-Kaiju Wall.

“What do you want?” They hadn’t parted on the best of terms.

Angella Brightmoon surveys him coolly, hands loose at her sides. Instead of answering him directly, she says, “So this is what you’ve been up to? Finding work where you can, all for a handful of rations a day and a dry place to sleep? What kind of life is that?”

Hordak bites his tongue. Asks again, “What do you want?”

“You know a Kaiju broke through the wall in Australia an hour ago; you’re wasting your time here.”

“And I suppose you have an idea of where I need to be.” He shakes his head. “No, thank you.”

Angella ignores him. “We need a Mark-3 pilot, and you’re the only one left.”

“That sounds like a you problem.”

“ _Hordak_.” Exasperation creeps into the Marshal’s tone. “We have a plan. A final assault on the Breach. We need you; the world needs you.” A brief pause before she says, “You don’t want to waste any more of your time working on a wall that clearly doesn’t work, do you?”

He’d only been working on it because he had needed something to do with his hands while waiting for the end of the world. Now that a kaiju’s broken through and proven it worthless, what’s the point?

He’d rather die in a jaeger, anyway.

✮

It’s raining at the Hong Kong Shatterdome when he arrives, thick fat drops pelting his face and shoulders as he disembarks from the JumpHawk. The Marshal and her daughter wait for him under a large black umbrella, serious looks on their faces. All of Hordak’s worldly possessions are in the bag that hangs from his shoulder; it’s surprisingly light.

He comes to a stop in front of them, standing in a puddle. Droplets of water slide down his neck and under the collar of his sweater, chilling him.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” the Marshal says by way greeting, folding her hands behind her back.

“After such a rousing speech?” Sarcasm drips from every word. “How could I not?”

The Marshal’s mouth tightens imperceptibly, hard to note in the shadow of the umbrella. “You remember Glimmer, don’t you?”

Hordak nods, though he doesn’t acknowledge the teenager. He’d never been fond of teenagers.

“Glimmer has been in charge of the Mark-3 restoration project. Her specialty is the Fright Zone.”

“You put a—” He does the math quickly. “ —a seventeen year old in charge of a jaeger restoration?”

Glimmer sticks her tongue out at him.

“She’s very good at what she does,” the Marshal tells him, leading the way off the tarmac. Hordak picks at a loose thread on the sleeve of his sweater as he follows, second guessing why he’s come. He doesn’t want to get back in a jaeger if a _teenager_ has been in charge of getting it operational again.

They step into the elevator. Glimmer presses the floor button.

“Hold the door!” someone calls. Hordak reaches out and slams his hand against the edge of the closing elevator doors, bracing them open for the blur racing toward the lift. A tarped cart bangs against the back wall of the elevator; the person pushing it follows closely after. “Thanks!”

She’s small, top of her head maybe meeting his chest. Purple hair shorn to her chin.

The elevator jerks to life; kaiju goop falls from the cart onto his boot. He curls his lip in disgust.

“Sorry,” the woman apologizes, adjusting the tarp on the cart. “New specimens!”

“Hordak,” the Marshal says, motioning to the scientist with a hand. “This is Entrapta, the head of our K-Science division. Entrapta, Hordak.”

He frowns at the small woman, who looks like she can’t be that much older than the Marshal’s teenage daughter. If that’s the case, it’s no wonder they’ve been losing to the kaiju.

“You’re the Mark-3 pilot everyone’s talking about!” Entrapta gushes, bouncing up on the balls of her feet.

Hordak shifts away from her and her cart of creepy crawly dead things, making a noncommittal noise. It seems like a lifetime before the elevator finally croaks out a ding and the doors slide open, fresh air rushing in and eddying around his legs.

The woman stays on the elevator with her kaiju specimens as everyone else disembarks. Hordak makes sure to press every button on the control panel on the way out.

Hong Kong’s jaeger bay looks identical to the one he remembers from Alaska, the room cavernous and loud. Groups of j-techs are at work everywhere he looks, some driving material transports, others barking orders, yet more rushing to and fro. He and his escort have to sidestep several of the groups for fear of being stepped on. It’s chaos, organized.

“Greyskull’s Honor; she has new Rangers, since you last saw her,” the Marshal says, motioning to the first jaeger bay. The jaeger’s a familiar one, all towering red and white metal. She’s in worse shape than the last time Hordak laid eyes on her, scraped and dented all over. “Catra and Adora are young, but adept.”

They carry on, dodging j-techs as they go. Sparks fly from overhead, the smell of ozone and hot metal thick in the air as the jaegers are quickly repaired. When the Breach first opened and the Kaiju first started attacking, it was every six months like clockwork.

Now, they’re lucky if they have two weeks between attacks.

“And Glory Horizon you know, of course,” the Marshal continues as they reach the second bay; a towering purple and white behemoth waits for them there, battered and bruised. “Spineralla and Netossa still pilot her, though they’re not as green as they were back when you were still. Well.”

The rest of her sentence hangs in the air like the blade of a guillotine, sharp over his neck. Neither of them bother to finish it.

The next bay holds a forest green jaeger, newer than the rest. Taller and thinner, light weight. It’s the one he saw on t.v. less than a week ago, fighting the Kaiju that broke through the Wall he had spent the better part of the past five years working on. There are more j-techs on her than Hordak can count, all of them rushing through repairs.

“Bohemian Bruiser is the only existing Mark-5 jaeger; you saw her in action the other day, on the television? It’s a miracle she and her pilots hadn’t left Australia yet when the Kaiju attacked and broke through the Anti-Kaiju Wall,” the Marshal explains, skin around her eyes tightening at the memory. “Scorpia and Perfuma are still a little . . . _angry_ about the whole ordeal, but the plan to close the Breach relies almost entirely on them and their jaeger.” The Marshal clears her throat, as though she’s still angry about it too.

“And just what is the plan?”

It’s Glimmer who answers. “We’re strapping a nuclear ordnance to the fastest jaeger— in this case, the Bruiser— and sending it through the Breach, at which point we detonate it and collapse the whole thing. Which should, according to Entrapta, destroy it and seal it off for good.”

Hordak does the only thing he can do in this situation: he stares at the mother-daughter duo like they’ve just grown second heads, unsure if he’s heard the whimsical plan correctly or not.

“Moving on!”

The final jaeger is the one he wants to see most.

Fright Zone stands in her bay, matte black paint sucking in the light around her. She’s in a better state than she was when Hordak saw her last just off the coast of Alaska five years ago, left arm missing and conn-pod breached. She’s whole again, not a mark on her, J-tech crews making last minute adjustments, showers of sparks falling to the concrete floor several stories below.

Emotion crowds Hordak’s throat, thick and cloying. He never thought he’d see the giant robot again, let alone restored to her former glory. Never thought he would stand before her, ready to pilot.

Perhaps he’s getting ahead of himself— he doesn’t have a partner, yet. Might not find one among the candidates the Marshal has lined up for him.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t hope.

✮

He tears through the potential drift partners the Marshal has lined up for him like they’re paper, one after another after another. Each of them falls easily, none of them scoring more than a point off of him. It’s almost embarrassing, the ease with which they fall.

“I thought you vetted them,” he snaps at the Marshal and her offspring, the two of them standing at the edge of the Kwoon Room. Both of them are frowning, identical divots between their eyebrows.

“They’re good candidates on paper!” Glimmer snaps, waving her clipboard in the air. “You’re just—”

The Marshal holds up a hand, silencing her daughter. Glimmer’s mouth closes with an audible _click_. “There’s one more candidate.”

His final opponent is small and purple and—

“This one is a scientist, Angella,” his complains, irritation creeping into his voice. He’s sweaty and tired, crop top sticking to his back. He wants to be done; there are no drift partners for him here. No one to pilot Fright Zone with.

He came all this way, only to fail.

“She’s one of the last off of Kodiak,” the Marshal corrects, tapping her foot impatiently. “She’s capable of being both.”

“Fine,” he bites out after a minute, turning back to face the scientist. She’s looking at him curiously with big eyes, staff loose in her hands. “I’m not going to go easy on you.”

“I don’t expect you to,” she replies.

They bow to each other. Raise their bo staffs.

Hordak circles the girl like a shark, eying her for an opening. She circles back, bare feet shuffling on the black mats.

He lashes out with the staff, snake-strike quick. The attack is blocked, sending a shockwave up his scarred arms that rattles into his teeth.

They both pause for a moment, sizing each other up.

His body moves before his mind does, striking out again. He feints in one direction, then pulls back and throws his full weight behind the blow, stopping just before his staff hits her neck. He allows it to hover there, just for a moment, to let her know he got the best of her right off the bat.

Seconds later, too fast for his eyes to track, the end of her staff taps his ribs.

“One-one,” Glimmer calls out. Hordak ignores her, narrowing his eyes and focusing on his opponent instead. The small woman is faster than he anticipated, but it’s an easy thing to correct for. He’ll just have to be faster.

He attacks with abandon. The steady _click clack clack_ of their bo staffs meeting fills the Kwoon Room, aided by the chatter of the audience they’ve drawn. It’s not just those he’s beaten prior; there’s J-techs and LOCCENT personnel and junior scientists who have come to bear witness. Glimmer calls out the score periodically, voice as carefully neutral as it has been through the entire ordeal.

Everything else falls away as he fights the scientist turned Ranger candidate. The noise, the exhaustion, the knowledge that if _this_ doesn’t work out, then nothing will; everything is gone, replaced by a single minded intensity as he does battle.

_It’s not a fight_ , Shadow Weaver’s ghost whispers across the back of his mind. _It’s a dialogue_.

“Three-Four,” Glimmer announces some time later. He’s covered in sweat, breath coming fast and hard, arms feeling like jelly. Entrapta doesn’t look like she’s faring much better, bangs sticking to her forehead, eyelids drooping.

She drops; he isn’t fast enough to counter as she kicks his feet out from underneath him, climbing nimbly back to her feet as he lands on the mat. The end of her bo staff hovers just over his neck.

“I’ve seen enough,” the Marshal announces, clapping her hands together and drawing everyone’s attention to the front of the room. Entrapta removes the end of her staff from his throat immediately and takes a step back, offering him a hand to help him stand.

Hordak ignores it, choosing instead to lie spreadeagle on the mats.

“The two of you are clearly drift compatible,” the Marshal says. Hordak groans, slamming his head against the floor. _Damn it all_. “We’ll do a drop test in three hours. Until then, do as you will.”

✮

“Why save her for last?”

“She lacks certain . . . instincts.”

Hordak snatches the file from the Marshal. Rifles through it quickly. “This says she’s made fifty sim drops and zero kills.”

“As I said, certain instincts are lacking.”

“Certain instincts?” Hordak scoffs, frowning. “She lacks the instinct to _kill_. Which you need when piloting a jaeger unless you want to _die_.”

He’s going to die in a jaeger, alright. Very quickly, if his partner is any indication.

✮

Being back in the polycarbonate drivesuit is not an entirely unpleasant experience. It isn’t his old white one— he’s certain that one’s in a landfill somewhere, battered and bloodied as it was after his last drop. His new one is deep red, not an imperfection to be found anywhere on the surface.

Next to him in her cradle, Entrapta is garbed in an identical drivesuit. She’s bouncing up and down with excitement, fingers flying through the pre-drop checklist, flipping switches and turning the HUD on.

“I never thought I’d get to do this!” she burbles; she’s moving so much that Hordak thinks she might bounce straight out of the cradle.

“ _Initiating neural handshake_ ,” a disembodied voice announces over the comms. Hordak braces himself for the onslaught that’s about to hit him.

_A rickety old barn, red paint peeling. Old tractor parts spread out on the bench. Oil and rust beneath her broken fingernails. Her mother, calling her in for lunch from the kitchen. Corn growing in the field, as far as the eye can see, towering up and over the top of her little head._

_The Bay Bridge shudders; the car shakes around him. His mother screams behind the wheel. All he can do is stare at the giant lizard thousands of feet away that just broke clean through the bridge, sending hundreds of cars into the churning water below._

_Taking the gameboy apart is muscle memory. Putting it back together is muscle memory. Watching the kaiju on the television means she can’t look away, attacking Cabo as it is. It’s the third time in eighteen months this has happened, and she’ll bet her gameboy that it’ll happen again in another six._

_The woman smacks him in the jaw with the staff, sending him reeling. He fights back, jabbing her right in the ribs. She hisses in response, dances to the side with a hand pressed to the offending location, long black hair writhing with the movement. “That hurt,” his Ranger partner snarls._

_Purple hair, coming off in chunks. Filling the sink up, up, up. It won’t fit in the helmet of the drivesuit. It has to come off. She’ll miss her pigtails._

_Water up to his waist, left arm dangling uselessly at his side, coastline coming into view. The pain is unbearable. Knees, hitting sand and rock. Falling. He’s alone, he’s alone, he’s—_

Back in his own head, mostly. Entrapta sits at the edges of it, just as he sits at the edges of hers. Connected. Tethered to each other by an invisible rope. He never thought he’d have someone in his head again like this, not after Shadow Weaver was forcibly ripped out. It’s a little unsettling, to be honest.

His partner looks at him and smiles, bubblegum sweet. Excitement burbles across their bond, uncontainable on her end. He pushes back, curmudgeon-like, and the woman looks away.

Drifting with Shadow Weaver was all teeth and sharp edges. It was crawling over broken glass and barbed wire. It was violence, for violence’s sake.

Drifting with Entrapta is decidedly much, much different. It’s numbers and emotion, science and faith. It’s like sitting in the center of a storm, knowing it won’t touch you.

“Right hemisphere calibrating,” he announces, reading the gauges on the panel above him.

“Left hemisphere calibrating,” Entrapta echoes, doing the same.

“ _Hemispheres calibrated_ ,” the disembodied confirms. “ _Neural handshake holding steady_.”

Having someone other than Shadow Weaver in his head is disorienting. They had been connected when she had been ripped from the conn-pod, connected when she had died. It feels like someone has taken the furniture in his head and moved it all a few inches in either direction, and replaced some of it entirely. It’s like—

“— _dak, you’re slipping out of alignment_ ,” the LOCCENT officer cautions.

Hordak grunts, pushing the thoughts away. Entrapta is looking at him, nose scrunched up behind the glass of her helmet, face thoughtful.

“What?” he snaps. She grins at him.

“Nothing,” she assures him, before adding, “It’s just. I’m in your head. How cool is that!”

He rolls his eyes.

This test, however drift compatible they are, can’t end soon enough.

✮

The Marshal yanks him from his room in the middle of the night, and somehow she doesn’t look bedraggled. She hardly gives him time to pull his sweater on before hauling him down to the K-Science labs without a word, mouth a harsh line.

He’s never been to the K-Science labs. Had avoided them as a general rule of thumb when he had haunted the Alaskan Shatterdome.

The K-Science lab at the Dome in Hong Kong is all giant test tubes filled with spare Kaiju parts, huge blackboards on the walls covered in complicated math, computers and their parts stacked to various heights.

Entrapta, sitting boneless in a chair in the center of the room, homemade neural cap in her hands hooked up to a Kaiju brain that floats in one of the giant test tubes.

“Entrapta,” the Marshal grits out. Her voice brooks no tone for Entrapta’s normal chittering. “What have you done.”

“I took it upon myself and drifted with a Kaiju!” Though she sounds excited about it, her voice shakes. One of her eyes won't stay open, twitching shut every few moments.

“And why would you do that!” The Marshal sounds to be at her wits end.

Hordak doesn’t know why he was dragged out of bed for this. He has better things to be doing, like sleeping; not watching his partner get a dressing down.

“I was curious,” she admits, slurring slightly. “I wanted to know what it was like, what was going through their heads, before we sealed the Breach.”

“And?”

“They’re a hivemind,” Entrapta gushes, blood coming out of her nose. “A _hivemind_! They’re all clones!”

“Clones,” Hordak repeats before he can help himself, disbelief creeping into his voice. “But they’re all different? Aren’t clones identical?”

She laughs that annoying laugh of hers that he doesn’t find endearing. Nope. Not him.

“Their cellular structure is identical. The— the Precursors, the creatures that are making them, the masterminds behind this whole thing, they start with the same base structure and create the Kaiju from there. Each Kaiju looks different, but they’re all the same on a cellular level. It’s like—” Her eye twitches. “Like, did you ever go to a Build-A-Bear? When you were a kid? Are Build-A-Bear’s still a thing? Anyway. It’s like that, but with giant aliens hellbent on the destruction of the human race. Each one starts out with the same base structure, but then the Precursors add all the fun wacky things on, like extra arms and giant spikes and that one Kaiju that could breathe fire.” She swipes at her nose with the back of her hand, smearing blood all over her face.

Disgusted, Hordak sets about finding a rag or something else she can wipe her face with, keeping one ear on the conversation.

“So you’re trying to tell me that the Kaiju. Aren’t acting on their own?” The Marshal rubs at her forehead, grabbing a discarded stool and pulling it over. “That they have orders?”

“Yes!” Hordak finds his quarry, slightly dirty, sitting discarded in a toolbox. He picks it up and takes it over to the sanitizing station as Entrapta continues, “We categorize Kaiju on a scale, right? One through five, based on radiation levels and water displacement and blood toxicity? Categories one through four are basically the foot soldiers, meant to attack the highly populated areas and destroy the population. The Cat fives are meant to finish the job, paving the way for the Precursors to come through the Breach and colonize the planet.”

Hordak passes the rag off to Entrapta, who takes it and swipes at the blood on her face. It only makes a bigger mess.

“And when does your math predict we will see a Category Five Kaiju?” There’s a tremor in the Marshal’s voice, something Hordak has never heard before.

Entrapta is silent for a moment, cogs in her head turning. “Likely in the next two events,” she says at length, dropping her hand that holds the rag into her lap.

Hordak curses; the Marshal pales.

“We have to move the assault up,” she says, turning all of her attention away from the scientist and onto Hordak.

“But we’re not ready,” Hordak argues. “She and I have drifted together all of once; I doubt we can successfully fight off a Kaiju, let alone whatever might come out of the Breach while we’re down there.”

“It doesn’t matter. We have to move now; the entire world is at stake!”

“Uh, guys.” Hordak and the Marshal both whip their heads to look at Entrapta. “There’s, uh, one more thing.”

“What?”

“The drift goes both ways,” she reminds them weakly, just as a klaxon begins blaring.

“ _Movement in the breach_.”

The Marshal curses. Presses a vaguely trembling hand to her mouth before pressing a steely look on the scientist. “I need you to do it again.”

“I only had one Kaiju brain, and this baby is _fried_. I can’t do it again even if I wanted to.” She takes the proffered rag from Hordak, dabbing at her face with it. “And to be clear, I do not want to.”

The Marshal digs a card out of her pocket. It’s matte black, inlaid with gold that catches the poor lighting in the lab.

“Go into the city,” she orders, passing Hordak the card. “Find Huntara. Show her that card; tell her I sent you. She should be able to get you access to a Kaiju brain.”

“How do you—”

“Don’t ask questions,” the Marshal snaps, walking towards the doors of the lab. Her presence is needed in LOCCENT. “Just go.”

✮

Hong Kong proper at night is a riot of neon color and bright light, a crush of people and sound and energy. The keys to the military jeep that hold the makeshift neural interfacing that Entrapta pulled together are tucked in his pocket, jeep itself parked inconspicuously in an alley.

Entrapta navigates the crowd beside him, blood gone from her face. She’s been uncharacteristically quiet since she drifted with the Kaiju brain, almost contemplative. The back of her hand brushes his occasionally as they wander through the crowd, looking for the shop the Marshal told them Huntara kept.

A dozen blocks pass, crowd thinning as they go, before he finds what he’s looking for: a dilapidated storefront that reads _Crimson Wastes_.

“This is it,” he says, unnecessarily, motioning to the store. “Let me do the talking.”

His partner makes a noncommittal noise in her throat, which he takes as an affirmative. It’ll be better this way; easier, without all of Entrapta’s chattering.

A small bell hanging over the top of the door chimes as Hordak pushes through the door. The inside of the shop is bright and cheery, all red and gold lacquer, the complete opposite of the dilapidation outdoors.

“Welcome in!” a thin girl behind the counter exclaims, eyes dashing between Hordak and Entrapta. “Are you here for Kaiju bone powder? Because we have Kaiju bone powder. Really, uh, helps with the ladies if y’know what I mean.”

Hordak really, really wishes he didn’t know what she meant.

“We’re here to see Huntara,” he grinds out, tips of his ears burning. Entrapta is mercifully silent next to him.

“Oh,” the girl says, mildly disappointed. “That’s a bummer.”

She steps out from behind the counter and locks the doors Hordak and Entrapta entered through without another word. Then she passes by them, heads to the opposite wall and pulls a hidden lever. There’s a grinding noise and wall swings inward, seam opening up in the middle, revealing behind it a walkway brimming with glowing green test tubes filled with kaiju remains.

Entrapta vibrates in excitement beside him, waking up from her daze a little.

“Go ahead; she’s back there,” the girl says, motioning down the hall.

Hordak leads the way.

The hall is surprisingly short and turns out into a circular, well lit room. In the center sits a desk and at the desk sits a woman with a long, white pony tail. She’s dressed in a nice red suit, feet kicked up on the surface of the desk as she lounges in her chair.

“Whaddaya want?” the woman demands, head lolled back as she looks up at the ceiling.

“Are you . . . Huntara?”

“Yeah. Now. Whaddaya want?” Huntara demands again, taking her feet off of her desk and sitting upright in her chair.

“We need a Kaiju brain,” Hordak says.

“Did I ask you?” she asks, fixing him with a glare. “I was talking to _her_. I don’t do business with _men_.”

Hordak’s too insulted to argue. Next to him, Entrapta brightens considerably, some of the dazed look going out of her eyes at Huntara’s words.

“That’s quite a business model,” she comments; Hordak hears more questions in her voice, and is thankful when she doesn’t ask them.

“It’s what works for me.” Huntara frowns, looking between the two of them. “I don’t deal in Kaiju brains. They’re worthless; dead by the time you bore through five hundred feet of bone.”

“The secondary brain will do fine.”

“I don’t deal in Kaiju brains,” Huntara repeats, slower this time. As if Entrapta hadn’t heard her the first time. “What good is a Kaiju brain, anyway? It’s the most useless part of the damned thing. The skin, the bone, the organs, the claws— everything but the brain has its use. Has value. What do you need a brain for?”

“I used a portion of a secondary brain to drift with a Kaiju and now I need to do it again.”

Huntara’s chair squeals as she pushes it back to stand. She towers over both of them, intimidating. Imposing. “You did. _What_.”

“I drifted with a Kaiju! Which is why we need a new brain. Right now, actually. It’s time sensitive. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re kind of. Having a double event right now?”

Huntara glares at them both.

Entrapta stands her ground, large eyes pleading.

“A double event?” the other woman repeats.

“Yes. Two Kaiju came out of the Breach a half an hour ago. Every available jaeger at the Hong Kong Shatterdome is currently fighting them, but—”

Her voice is drowned out by the proximity siren sounding, warning that a kaiju has made it past the Miracle Mile and is incoming.

“You’re both _idiots_ ,” Huntara tells them, blunt. “You’re going to get us all _killed_. Do you know what you’ve _done_. Now that you’ve drifted with them, they’re looking for you!”

“Why are you lumping me in with her!” Hordak demands, put out. “I didn’t drift with the damned Kaiju!”

“Get out of my shop!” Huntara roars.

They don’t have to be told twice.

✮

Outside the crowds are heading for the Anti-Kaiju Refuges, underground bunkers meant to protect the general population from Kaiju attacks.

Entrapta and Hordak slip into the crowd, his hand in hers so they don’t lose each other. Screams ring in his ears, the crash of buildings being torn asunder echoing through the streets. The Kaiju must be close; Huntara must have been right, it must be looking for Entrapta.

They squeeze into an Anti-Kaiju Refuge just before the doors close, packed in like sardines in a tin with hundreds of other people. Everyone is breathless with waiting, too scared and nervous to speak amongst themselves. The smell of sweat and fear assail his nose, a deadly concoction.

Above them, the roof shakes, sending dust down from the rafters.

People scream.

Entrapta’s hand tightens around his to the point of bruising, but she doesn’t say a word.

The roof shakes again, harder this time; everyone ducks collectively on instinct.

Anti-Kaiju Refuges are meant to be Kaiju-proof, underground to prevent the aliens from finding them in the first place. That the Kaiju has located this one, is actively trying to break into it, lends some more credence to the idea that the Kaiju is looking for Entrapta.

The roof peels back like the lid of a tin can, night air rushing in. The Kaiju’s bellow drown out the screams around them, saliva flying through the air. Hordak can’t see much of what it looks like, this close, just it’s glowing blue mouth full of serrated teeth.

It draws its head back, ready to strike; Hordak tucks Entrapta in closer to his side, putting himself between her and the monster. He knows he’s a flimsy shield, but there’s little else he can do. It isn’t like they’re in a jaeger.

A horn sounds, deep and echoing; Hordak winces against the noise.

The Kaiju whips it’s head in the direction the noise came from, just in time to get a boat to the face.

Reeling backward, the Kaiju forgets it’s quarry, turning its attention onto the jaeger that holds the offending boat. Greyskull’s Honor stands in the streets, holding the boat as though it’s a sword, facing down the alien lizard.

The Kaiju screeches, turning it’s full body toward the jaeger. It launches itself at the giant robot, grappling with it, grabbing the boat with one hand and the shoulder of the jaeger with the other. The two behemoths wrestle with each other, rocking back and forth.

The Kaiju comes away with the husk of the boat, pushing Greyskull’s Honor backward. The jaeger loses ground, taking a few steps back. The boat is tossed carelessly to the side, flung like a matchbox car into the air.

With a shriek, the Kaiju lunges forward and thunders into Greyskull’s Honor’s chest, pressing its advantage. The two giants disappear from view completely, though the sounds of their battle echo throughout the night.

“Are we going to live?” Entrapta asks, coming out of her crouched position. Hordak stands with her.

“I think so.”

✮

They enter Huntara’s shop again, finding the hidden lever easily and taking the secret hall into the back room. Huntara and her group of Kaiju Black Market helpers are there, gathering the gear necessary to strip down a Kaiju carcass safely and sell it for parts.

“You lived,” Huntara says, surprise coloring her voice when she catches sight of them.

“You owe us a secondary Kaiju brain,” Entrapta announces.

And that’s that.

✮

The secondary brain is damaged, but the Kaiju was, somehow, pregnant. The offspring had come out of the dead Kaiju and eaten Huntara before choking itself to death on it’s still attached umbilical cord.

All that remains of Huntara are her shoes, discarded.

Hordak watches in thinly veiled disgust as Entrapta drives the last of the probes through the thin skull and into the creature’s brain, worried it might come back to life again and eat them both in one big bite.

“Okay,” she says, hopping down. She picks up her rigged together neural cap, the one she made herself. “That should do it. The Drift shouldn’t take more than a minute or so, so, uh . . .”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hordak snaps, picking up the second neural cap. “We’re _partners_. We’ll share the load.”

Entrapta brightens, broad grin stretching across her face. “You’d do that for me?”

In answer, Hordak stuffs the cap down on his head, frowning at her. She should know by now that he doesn’t do emotions very well.

He takes her hand again.

They smash the button together.

Drifting with Entrapta is different, this time; the Kaiju brain they’re hooked up to doesn’t help matters.

Hordak sees a jumble of things that don’t make sense, stepping into the drift. Glimpses of Entrapta’s past, of a farm and old tractors, a junk yard and Kodiak Island. His own past, Shadow Weaver and Fright Zone, growing up in the Bay Area, the first Kaiju to make landfall.

And then things get Weird.

_The Precursors are large creatures with big heads and sharp arms. They’re smaller than the Kaiju. Several of them are bent over an open pit, limbs stuck in it, working feverishly._

_They look up in unison; they’re staring straight at him._

_His skin crawls. He backs up. He—_

Entrapta’s standing over him, left eye red and twitching and bleeding. “You were having a seizure,” she says by way of greeting, holding the limp neural cap in her hands.

“That was— that—” He doesn’t have words. His mind is a jumble of emotion and images, things he can’t separate from each other, too much information to properly process all at once.

“Yes,” Entrapta says. “But we need to get back to the Dome. The Marshal needs to know that her plan to assault the Breach won’t work.”

✮

“What do you mean it won’t work. You told me it would!” The Marshal is furious, voice echoing in the confines of Entrapta’s lab.

“That was before I drifted with a Kaiju! Twice!” Entrapta defends, waving her hands in the air. “Now I know that the Breach won’t let anything through unless it’s a Kaiju! The Breach is like— it’s like a barcode scanner at a grocery store! It reads the Kaiju DNA, and unless it reads the Kaiju DNA, it won’t open! It won’t let anything through! Any payload we send into the Breach will just bounce back at us!”

“Then what are we supposed to do!”

Entrapta and Hordak glance at each other. They had come up with something that loosely resembled a plan on the way back to the Dome, but the Marshal wasn’t going to like it.

“We wait,” Hordak says. “Until the next event.”

The Marshal laughs, bitter. “You want us to wait? Knowing what we know?”

“It’s the only option we have; it’ll give us time to repair the other jaegers; Bohemian Bruiser, at the very least. Give the other pilots time to recover. Give Entrapta and I time to build on our drift compatibility.”

“Fine,” the Marshal agrees, waving them off with her hand. “Fine! We wait.”

✮

They don’t have time.

The Precursors give them sixteen hours before sending the next pair of Kaiju through the Breach:

Two Category Fours, the largest ever seen; they circle the Breach like sharks, waiting.

Waiting.

They strap the bomb to Greyskull’s Honor instead.

✮

Entrapta’s nerves jitter across the drift and into his brain, making him nervous. He’s never been nervous before a drop; nerves get people killed.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, already dreading the answer. But he knows that this has to be resolved before they go under, knows that they can’t drag whatever this is down beneath the Pacifc with them.

“I— what if this doesn’t work?” she asks, voice shaking. Her hands are steady at her sides, gaze steely as she looks out over the Pacific. “What if I’m wrong?”

“You’re the best the PPDC has to offer. You drifted with a Kaiju twice at great personal risk. I doubt you’re wrong, Entrapta.”

“But what if I am? What if I get everyone killed? What if—”

Hordak twists in his cradle, doing his best to look at his partner full on. “You. Are. Not. Wrong,” he enunciates. “Trust yourself a little. I do.”

Warmth trickles into their bond, and silence reigns in the conn-pod.

Finally, in a tiny voice, she says, “Thank you.”

The JumpHawks release them some time later and they fall into the Pacific with the other jaeger, landing with a great splash. They sink like rocks in the salt water, visibility decreasing rapidly as they descend. The temperature inside the conn-pod cools as they drop; Hordak’s ears pop as the pressure rises.

Fright Zone’s feet hit the ocean floor, knees bending with the force. They turn on the floodlights attached to the shoulders of their jaeger, illuminating the ocean around them. There’s nothing to see but sand and a few large rocks, lights cutting through the dark for no more than a few feet.

They walk for what seems like forever, radars blank. This close to the Breach no fish roam, smart enough to know that danger lurks here.

The proximity alarm barely has time to sound before the first Kaiju slams into their side, maw biting down on their right arm and tearing. Entrapta engages their sword immediately, skewering the Kaiju in the side. The noise the creature makes vibrates through the water.

The Kaiju rips itself off the sword, backing up. They press their advantage, filling the space the Kaiju left behind, slashing downward with their weapon. At their side, their right arm hangs useless. Entrapta keeps swiping at the giant lizard, keeping it at bay. It swipes at them, jaws snapping, tail thrashing in the water.

The other Kaiju comes flying across the abyss, slamming into their opponent, tossed by Greyskull’s Honor.

Startled, Fright Zone takes a step back.

“A heads up would have been nice,” Hordak snaps into the communications system as the Kaiju regroup, shaking off their daze.

“There was no time!” Catra snaps back, edges of her voice frayed.

Both Kaiju turn their attention onto Greyskull’s Honor, heads bobbing in the water as they reevaluate their prey.

The Kaiju move as one through the water, angling themselves away from Fright Zone and targeting Greyskull’s Honor.

There’s an idea forming in Entrapta’s mind; he can feel it. Can feel the guilt she has at having it.

“Technically, _we’re_ a nuclear bomb,” she reminds LOCCENT and the other Rangers over the comms. It’s all she needs to say to convey what she means.

“Right,” Adora says, slight tremor to her voice. “Catra and I will detonate the payload. Take out the Kaiju that way.”

“ _Can you make it out in time?_ ” the Marshal asks.

“It doesn’t matter,” Adora responds, voice steeling. “We do what we have to do.”

Both Kaiju bore down on Greyskull’s Honor simultaneously, slicing through the water like knives.

Hordak and Entrapta can only watch in muted horror as Catra and Adora detonate the bomb strapped to their back.

They brace as one, impact from the detonation sending shockwaves through the water. The fallout from the explosion rocks the jaeger, sending them bouncing in their cradles. Hordak grits his teeth, back of his helmeted head banging into the cradle that holds him in place.

Sand and debris roll over them like a tide, force of it cracking the viewport of the jaeger. When it subsides and they can see again, nothing is left but a few chunks of Kaiju remains lying on the ocean floor.

They stand and grab the nearest chunk of carcass with their working arm.

“Fright Zone headed for the Breach,” Hordak reports to LOCCENT.

“ _Confirmed_ ,” a LOCCENT officer replies, voice more distorted through the mic than normal.

Together, he and Entrapta take one step forward and then another; the jaeger complies, moving through the water like it’s moving through mud. They drag the Kaiju carcass with them and it makes for slow going, jaeger as damaged as it is.

“ _Movement detected in the Breach_ ,” the Marshal announces into their ears just as their proximity alarm begins to wail.

“What is it?” Entrapta asks, tired.

The Marshal hesitates before answering. “ _It’s a Category Five_.”

They share a look. Their resolve strengthens.

Claws appear over the cliff’s edge, long and thin. A head like a dragon’s follows soon after, glowing blue maw open under the water.

Entrapta and Hordak don’t think about it: They start running, full bore, toward the Kaiju emerging from the hole, dropping the carcass they had been dragging along.

The Kaiju barely has its feet under it before Fright Zone slams into it, Entrapta skewering it’s shoulder with her sword and a scream; they tackle it back over the edge of the cliff and into the abyss below.

✮

The Anteverse is all blue light and arcs of electricity, zero gravity as they float downward.

The Kaiju slides off of their sword easily, drifting away from them, motionless.

In the cradle next to him, Entrapa is unmoving. They’re still connected in the Drift, however tenuous their connection may be, but he gets no response when he probes at her mind with his own.

Stretching out, he reaches over and presses the necessary buttons to get her into the escape pod and out of the jaeger. In a matter of seconds, Entrapta’s gone, their bond broken, and Hordak is left to pilot Fright Zone by himself in the Anteverse.

Not that it matters; he’s done it by himself before, when Shadow Weaver died. He can do it by himself again when the world is at stake.

His fingers fly through pressing a series of buttons that would turn Fright Zone from a jaeger into a weapon of mass destruction, a process they went over a few times on Kodiak Island but expressed should never be tried.

“ _Unable to process your request. Manual override required_ ,” the onboard AI informs him in an annoyingly calm voice, as though it’s unaware he only has a limited amount of time to act.

Disgusted, Hordak unhooks himself from his cradle with a pneumatic hiss. He’ll have to do it the old fashioned way, then.

It’s hard to breathe as he goes through the motions, pulling levers and flipping switches to turn the jaeger from a giant robot into a nuclear warhead.

“ _Sixty seconds to detonation_ ,” the AI announces once he’s done. “ _Fifty nine, fifty eight, fifty seven . . ._ ”

✮

“—dak! Hordak!” Something touches his face. He flinches away from it, eyes fluttering open.

He closes them against the harsh light just as quickly, groaning. Why does everything have to hurt? Why does it have to be so bright? Why does whoever sitting on his chest have to be so loud?

“What!” he finally snaps, though his voice comes out croaky and sore. The weight on his chest shifts, rocking backwards onto his middle, and he wheezes.

“You’re alive!”

“Of course I’m alive!” He opens his eyes; above him is nothing but clear blue sky, not a cloud to be seen. The sides of his escape pod creep into the edges of his vision, and the events of the last few minutes begin to slide back to him. “I— shit, I’m alive.”

Entrapta’s worried face pops into view, hovering over his own. Tears sit unshed in her rose colored eyes. “I thought you were dead. You weren’t breathing.”

And what is he supposed to say to that? There’s nothing he can say to that. Instead, he braces a hand on either side of his escape pod and sits up, nearly knocking his partner off of the top of him and into the Pacific. She catches herself on his shoulder and settles more fully into his lap.

There’s no hesitancy as he places a gloved hand on her polycarbonate-clad hip and the other on the back of her head, drawing her closer. She smells of salt and sweat and the oil used on the jaegers, of kaiju blood and human blood; she smells alive.

Her arms wrap around him, face burying into his semi-exposed neck. They’ll never have to drift together, never be inside each other’s heads again in that intimate way. The Kaiju will never threaten them again, now that they’ve destroyed the Breach.

In the distance, he can hear the sound of the JumpHawks coming for them.

Entrapta pulls back first, sniffling. “What now?”

“Now?” Hordak thinks for a moment, tucking a loose chunk of her hair back behind her ear. “I think we need to get a cat.”

“A cat?” She blinks at him, thinking, teeth scraping over her lower lip. “What’re we naming it?”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get there,” he tells her as the JumpHawks reach them.

Entrapta giggles, and it’s the most endearing noise in the world. “That’s. A really long name?”

“We’ll call him Imp for short.”

“Uh, guys?” Adora calls. “This is really sweet and all, but it’s getting kind of embarrassing to watch!”

Hordak whips his head to the right, where Adora and Catra sit in their separate escape pods, looking no worse for the wear. Catra makes a gagging noise in his general direction.

“Right,” Entrapta says, rubbing at the back of her head. “I forgot to mention. They kind of. Survived?”

.

.

.

.

.

.

In Hong Kong, near the carcass of a Kaiju, Huntara cuts herself free of the smallest of the Kaiju.

“ _Where_ are my _shoes_!”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! come join me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/munchlaxe)!


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